“Water Integrity in MENA” project approved by the UfM

The Senior Officials of the UfM member countries approved the adoption of five new regional projects during their 6^th Senior Officials Meeting this year, which took place on 4 December 2014 at the headquarters of the UfM Secretariat, in Barcelona (find brief summary of each project below). Additionally, one more project related to youth employability and entrepreneurship was presented with a view to its future UfM-labelling.

2014 has been the year to develop and accelerate the UfM project pipeline.  The number of UfM-labelled projects has reached a figure of 29 and approximately 100 projects are currently under study by the UfM Secretariat in an effort to strengthen operational cooperation and provide answers to different socio-economic challenges in the region.

Among the 5 approved projects there was a project on water integrity: “Water Integrity in MENA”. Promoted by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), this project aims to improve transparency and accountability practices in water management in the MENA region by addressing poor governance structures; high water demand and low levels of trust among different parties sharing the same water resource; and limited institutional mechanisms for applying integrated water resources management principles, which is leading to chronic water stress in the region. The first phase will be implemented over a 4-year period in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) has supported this project with a financial contribution of 2.3 million Eur.